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Summer Book Exchange

For the second year in a row I had the great pleasure of participating in the Love Books Summer Book Exchange hosted by The Educators’ Spin On It. Over 30 bloggers exchanged a book and activity with a partner. This year I was paired with Capri + 3 to exchange a book and activities.

Theresa sent us a big box decorated with clues to what was inside. I must say we were stumped! I racked my brain all evening trying to guess what was inside. Do you have any guesses?

The next morning, my oldest son was feeling a bit under the weather so it was great to have a special package to open. We were delighted to get a book we hadn’t read before- Shout! Shout it out! by Denise Fleming.

Shout! Shout it out! is a story that encourages readers to shout out what they recognize. Since the book is full of letters, numbers, and colors, there are lots of opportunities for shouting. The book is vibrant with bold colors and Fleming’s recognizable paper collages.

Next, we were ready to dig into our activities that Theresa’s family sent us. Both of my boys wanted to play with the megaphones first. My oldest was excited to get a purple one since that is his favorite color at the moment. The megaphones were super cute. They even had a shout decal on them. My boys spent most of the morning decorating their megaphones with stickers. As you can see, we still need to practice which end you speak into!

We also did a matching activity. We were provided colored balloons and corresponding pipe cleaner “strings”. After matching balloons with strings, we taped them together. Then, as we read the story again, my oldest son would hold up the correct color balloon as the color word was read. We also practiced counting the balloons. My son later decided that the balloons made great tomato plants in a pretend garden. Love children’s imaginations!

We then tackled another color matching activity. This time Theresa had sent colored cards with corresponding colored clothespins. My son got to practice his fine motor abilities by pinching the clothes pin to open it and attach it to the correct color card. Colored popsicle sticks were also provided to give extra sorting practice.

We also made felt mice. It was nice to have everything cut for us and my boys simply glued everything together.

Our last activity was to create a torn paper collage similar to the style of Fleming’s work. We were provided torn tissue paper to which we added water. Then we cut shapes (We cut letters since that is one thing we are working on this summer.) out of a paper towel to use as our template. We put the wet tissue paper on the paper towel template and put it in the sun to dry. When dry, we simply peeled the paper towel away. We were left with a beautiful letter to use to make a picture. I forgot to take a picture of this!

It’s always so fun to get packages in the mail. My boys had so much fun with the activities and we are so grateful to Capri + 3 for customizing a package for us.

Would you like to see what we sent to the four kiddos at Capri + 3? Head over to Theresa’s blog today to see the package we sent them. Thank you again to Kim and Amanda at The Educators’ Spin On It for hosting this great event. Please check out all of the other wonderful bloggers and their exchanges here. We look forward to participating again next summer.

Did you miss last year’s exchange? Here is the book and activities we received. And, here is the book and activity we sent. Enjoy!

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About Jodie Rodriguez

Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two young boys and an early childhood/elementary educator with over 18 years of experience. Jodie's passion is helping parents, teachers, librarians and anyone else interested in nurturing our youngest readers.